tion by any -- including Washington itself" (Smith, 1984, p. 98).
Accordingly, Hoover greatly enlarged the department, adding 3,000 new employees to its roles, an action strikingly contrary to the small-government Republicanism of the Harding and Coolidge administration. He carried out studies of oil reserves, and "expanded the Census Bureau into an informational treasure trove for business planners" (Smith, 1984, p. 99), providing a wide range of data and statistics that businesses could use to obtain marketing and other information.
Businesses were urged, and to some degree pressured, to adopt standardized measures, so that the interchangeability of components, already a basis of production-line manufacturing methods, could in some degree be expanded across the whole economy. At the same time he was an advocate of business, particularly insofar as it adopted modern, rationalized methods of management. Hoover was the champion of what at that ti
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